‘Housing-first’ can present problems for many homeless women: study

One woman kept her apartment frozen in time for her child’s return, the placemats set out for lunch, and refused to live there until she had that child back. Another smashed all the windows in her new apartment with a hammer, triggered by the sight of the door to her new bathroom — because she’d been sexually assaulted in a bathroom.

A third eventually refused any more help because too many people were trying to help.

The anecdotes from a project dedicated to housing the city’s most vulnerable women reveal some surprising conclusions — the housing first, wraparound model embraced for homeless people in London can present serious problems for many women.

As a result, the shelter system, considered by many as an oldschool solution to homelessness, needs to be expanded, for women at least, the project concludes. “Even though housing is the top priority for the community serving homeless women, it may not always be the women’s,” the report from Homes4Women London concluded. “There is an overwhelming need for a low-barrier drop-in centre open 24 hours. Scattered site housing often isolates vulnerable women and leaves them susceptible to violence and trauma. In fact, many of the women didn’t want to spend time in their apartments, were rarely home for inhome visits and eventually would disappear into the shadows.” The project did successfully house many women and in one notable case, helped a woman regain access to her child, Jennifer Vale, Homes4London project leader, said this week. “I do believe the housing-first model works. But I think there are also challenges in that and we need to make some changes.” London’s housing-first model emphasizes finding people homes and then supporting them with teams of workers — the wraparound support.

Older models kept people in shelter beds until their problems were under control.

The recommendations of this latest report will be passed to local and national agencies and coalitions working on homelessness. But the report’s key recommendation of a 24/7 drop-in shelter for women didn’t sit well with the city’s champion of housing-first, homeless prevention manager Jan Richardson.

Asked if she supported the idea, Richardson would only say the city’s housing-first program already provides 24/7 support, and there are 110 emergency shelter beds in the city for women. But the housing-first model can adapt to other ideas, she added. Funded by the London Community Foundation and the Sisters of St. Joseph, Homes4Women launched in September 2015 as a pilot project, taking in 10 women. By the end of the project in 2017, six women had been successfully housed, two had withdrawn from the program, one had returned to jail and one was moving from a shelter to a home, said a draft report released last week.

The “aha moment” during the project was recognizing the impact losing their children had on the women, said Shelley Yeo, a manager at Anova. “Everything has frozen since their children passed away or were taken from them. It made it impossible for them to move forward.” Neither a so-called home, empty of children, nor a shelter with children present, offered comfort. Nor did the wraparound support that has several agencies deeply involved in the women’s lives. “Why does everyone know my damn business?” one woman asked, according to the report. One woman withdrew from the program because she felt her independence was being removed, the report states.

The Homes4Women London project also concluded that support from Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre and London hospitals was “inconsistent and disorganized.”

One woman had a discharge plan that included help on the weekday she was supposed to be released from incarceration. But she was let out of jail on a Saturday, and had to rely on help from the same people who triggered her addiction and crime in the first place, Vale said. Race and culture also has to be considered more closely, the project found.

One woman, who is black, had a reputation for being violent. But it became clear a language barrier was agitating her. Over time, the small group of black women working with her came to ease her anxiety and help her get housing.